How to Raise an Elephant (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #21)

by Alexander McCall Smith

Don’t believe something because you want it to be true, he wrote. Nor should you believe everything you read or are told by other people. Ask them for the evidence, and if they cannot produce it, then politely say “I am unconvinced” and leave it at that.

People revealed their characters to you without too much encouragement; you simply had to listen.

It was an old, familiar story of a relationship that had gone wrong but that was limping along because of some outside factor—children or property. And both of these, when one thought about them, amounted to the same thing: dependence.